Political Cues and Internet Use: Elite Communication Strategies and the Use of the Internet for Information Seeking and Political Participation.

这项研究计划的中心问题涉及信息时代大众和精英之间不断变化的关系。这项调查探讨了通过传统大众媒体接触政治线索对在线政治参与、信息寻求和学习的程度和性质的影响。具体地说，研究人员评估了竞选广告和新闻报道中的认知启发式对公民使用的信息寻求和参与策略的影响。人们特别关注政治交流中威胁线索的影响，因为一项新兴的研究表明，这些线索在促进参与方面特别有效。研究人员还重新审视了近40年前基本上被抛弃的选择性接触假说，以确定接触标准的政治沟通是增加还是减少了通过网络选择基本一致的信息。一项初步研究为这些假设提供了支持。被调查为对互联网搜索和行为潜在影响的中心传播因素是广告语气、使用网络的动机、网络信息的可信度和各种形式的威胁线索。随着互联网发展成为几乎无限的信息媒介，随着获取障碍的消失，将现有态度与信息搜索战略联系起来的机制值得重新关注。研究设计建立在先导研究中采用的创新方法之上。在2000年秋季进行的这项实验中，成年受试者观看了由候选人布什和戈尔赞助的政治广告，这些广告是在媒体实验室建造的。在这些广告中，研究人员操纵了用来组织候选人政策立场的维度：一个版本强调党派冲突，而另一个版本则强调意识形态、性格或团体代表的差异。在观看广告后，受试者被告知他们可以访问总统候选人的两个网页中的一个或两个，以了解任何他们感兴趣的额外信息。这些网页仿照候选人的实际网站，并进行了标准化，以便在每个网站上以类似的方式组织信息。受试者在网站上的活动和在每个链接上花费的时间都被电子跟踪。这种对搜索行为的现实而不引人注目的衡量标准代表着对自我报告信息寻求的调查衡量标准的重大改进。近年来，关于公民参与、参与和对政府的信任的下降趋势的学术证据和普遍关注一直在增加。与此同时，也有一些人预测，随着互联网迅速扩大覆盖范围，政治传播的格局正在接近一场重大变革。一些人认为，这些技术进步将扭转参与度螺旋式下降的趋势，而另一些人则预测，这将导致更多的孤立和被动。到目前为止，这场辩论大多没有提到这样一种可能性，即互联网的政治影响至少在一定程度上取决于精英的行为。由于在互联网时代，传播策略肯定会不断演变，以最大限度地发挥运动的影响，研究人员必须开始探索公民如何在巨大的互动媒体下对这些信息做出反应。大多数观察家会同意，随着获取信息和参与互联网的障碍继续减少，精英与大众的互动将发生重大变化。仍然存在的问题是如何做到这一点。对这些现象进行严格而详细的研究不仅是必要的，而且对于理解不久的将来的公众意识和政治行为也是至关重要的。

The central question of this research program involves the changing relationship between masses and elites in the information age. The investigation explores the impact of exposure to political cues via traditional mass media, on the extent and nature of on-line political participation, information seeking and learning. Specifically, the investigators assess the impact of cognitive heuristics in campaign advertising and news coverage on the information seeking and participatory strategies citizens employ. Particular attention is paid to the effects of threat cues in political communication, as an emerging body of research suggests that these cues are especially effective at boosting engagement. The researchers also revisit the selective exposure hypothesis that was largely abandoned nearly four decades ago, to determine if exposure to standard political communication boosts or diminishes the selection of attitudinally consistent information via the web. A pilot study provides support for these hypotheses. The central communication factors that are investigatee as potential influences on Internet searching and behavior are advertising tone, the motivation to use the web, the credibility of information on the web, and various forms of threat cues. As the Internet evolves into an almost limitless information medium, and with barriers to accessing disappearing, the mechanism linking existing attitudes to information search strategies deserves renewed attention. The research design builds upon the innovative methodology employed in a pilot study. In this experiment, conducted in the fall of 2000, adult subjects were shown political ads sponsored by candidates Bush and Gore that were constructed in the Media Lab. In these ads, the researchers manipulated the dimension used to organize the candidate's policy stands: one version emphasized partisan conflicts while others highlighted ideological, character, or group representation distinctions. After viewing the ads, subjects were told they could visit either or both of the web pages of the presidential candidates to learn any additional information that interested them. The web pages were patterned after the candidates' actual web sites and were standardized so that the information was organized similarly on each site. Subjects' movements on the websites and the time spent on each link were tracked electronically. This realistic yet unobtrusive measure of search behavior represents a significant improvement over survey measures of self-reported information seeking. In recent years, scholarly evidence for, and popular concern about, downward trends in civic engagement, participation, and trust in government have been growing. At the same time, there are those who predict that the landscape of political communication is approaching a major transformation as the Internet rapidly extends its reach. Some have argued these technological advances will reverse the downward spiral in engagement, while others predict even more isolation and passivity. Mostly absent from the debate thus far is the possibility that the political effects of the Internet will be, at least in part, contingent on the behavior of elites. Since communication strategies will certainly evolve to maximize the impact of campaigns in the age of the Internet, researchers must begin to explore how citizens react to those messages in terms of the vast interactive medium at their fmgertips. Most observers would agree that as barriers to acquiring information and participating on the Internet continue to drop, elite-mass interactions will change significantly. The question that remains is how. A rigorous and detailed study of these phenomena is not only warranted, but vital for understanding public awareness and political behavior in the near future.